Glasgow has always been a very "musical" city: its history boasts many great bands and the numerous local live music venues include both intimate spots and huge arenas. It seemed therefore only natural for Glasgow-based Design Studio Briggs & Cole to come up with a project that combined art, music and fashion.
Founded in 2012 by Glasgow School of Art graduates Jane Briggs and Christy Cole, the design studio create limited edition and unique commissions, including furniture, lighting, objects d'art, large scale artworks, fabric and wallpaper prints. Quite often their pieces are made by hand in the studio using a variety of processes developed in direct response to working with specific materials. All the designs produced are based on the same principle - every piece must tell a story.
For one of their latest projects the duo focused on an audio-visual tale, inviting twelve artists and designers to create a wearable scarf based on one main theme - music - and moving from the art of collage.
The resulting scarves were inspired by a range of influences: from a graphic novel interpretation of folk songs (Laurence Figgis's "Blonda") to rhythms and patterns (Gabriella Di Tano's "Clap"); from variations and repetitions (Tony Swain's "Trained Exteriors") to a fantasy representation of Paisley boy Paolo Nutini (Fiona Jardine's "Paolo") or a collage inspired by music production and performance (Goodd's "Burning Down the House").
Albums and typography proved strong influences for some of the artists and designers involved: Graphical House's "I Want The One I Can't Have" moves from The Smiths' "Meat Is Murder" cover, while Fraser Sim's "Forever Changes" is a digitally remixed representation of Love's eponymous 1967 album.
Bold graphics prevail in "Grille" by Derek Welsh, rooted in a memory of a Hohner accordion's distinctive grille ornamentation, "Sextet" by Ian Balch with six shapes taken from the same source, each imitating the first from memory but rotated and flipped in sequence, and "Taper", Briggs & Cole's own interpretation of the music theme.
Honorable mentions go to Mark Vernon's "Isarithmic Tape Edit 3" that includes a number of "sampled" sources - old reel to reel tape box graphics, musical notation, diagrams for electronic music circuits and dress cutting patterns - all reduced to their most basic elements; Pamela Flanagan's "Neon Romance", an architectural love poem to The Barrowlands, a venue that preserves many people's memories (the scarf design revolves around its iconic façade); and Kevin Hutcheson's "Sample", a sort of Cubist collage or still life with sections of several musical instruments such as a guitar, hinting at the multi-faceted nature of our experience of listening to recorded or live music, and the sort of collage that may appeal to Postcard Records fans.
"Our co-contributors have ingeniously designed very unique visual identities which go above and beyond our initial conception of what a music inspired collage design could be," Christy Cole, Director of Briggs & Cole, stated about this project in an official press release.
The scarves (100% silk, 90cm x 90cm) were part of the "No Line No Wave" exhibition, hosted a few months ago at Graven's Pavement Gallery in Glasgow's Albion Street. The limited edition pieces are currently available to buy (£110 each; enquiries should be directed to [email protected]).
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